Keep Your Light Alive »
A few years after starting our Centre for Spiritual Living in Kelowna, British Columbia, I found myself at a retreat with one of the senior ministers from my region. We were both night owls, so it came as no surprise to find us walking together in the wee hours of the morning. At the time, I was suffering some dissatisfaction and ennui around my relatively new role as a minister, and I had the opportunity to share this with my friend and mentor. His response was almost immediate. “Ah, I see,” he said. “Your church is going well, your numbers are up, you have your own building, money’s good and you think you should be fulfilled, but you’re not?”
Upon deliberation, my response was, “Yes, that’s exactly it.” He just looked at me, shook his head and said, “Kenn, the problem you have is that you’ve met your vision, and you haven’t found a new one yet.” My resonance of his statement was one of the greatest “Aha!” moments I have ever experienced.
Over the 40-some years of my life until then, I had been an entrepreneur and largely self-employed. I had built five or six successful businesses, and at some point with every one of them, I had this exact feeling and experience. At this point in business, I had emotionally deserted, left or sold to start something new. I was no longer experiencing the joy I had when I was guided by the vision and passion of starting up. With my ministry, I was really left with only two choices: Develop a new vision for my ministerial work or leave. Obviously, because I’m still here, I found a new vision. Whether we know it or not, our entire life, well-being and joy are based on holding and following a vision.
It is written that the master teacher Jesus said, “Where there is no vision, the people will die.” Metaphorically, the death comes from
inside. We were not created to mindlessly tread pathways of safety and societally condoned constructs of life imagined by others. We were created to evolve our dreams and grow ourselves.
Personally, I have not been without a vision for every level of my life since then. We were created for the sole (soul) purpose of actualizing our own selves. To do this, find what you’re passionate about and allow the Greater Power to roll out the steps to make it so. Vision is the light of self-fulfillment. Without it, something inside of us represses, regresses, dwindles and dies.
It’s up to us to keep our light alive. Blessings.
Dr. Kenn Gordon is the spiritual leader of Centers for Spiritual Living and co-pastor of the Centre for Spiritual Living in Kelowna, British Columbia.
Read Dr. Gordon’s blog on Patheos.com: “The Principles of Spiritual Living“
